Never forget Christopher Columbus's linguistic crimes and horniness for manatees

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/12/never-forget-christopher-columbuss-linguistic-crimes-and-horniness-for-manatees.html

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Honestly, in my mind I can see Homer Simpson/Peter Griffin responding with:
“Gotta celebrate somebody…”

I think that’s about it. The average person hasn’t put enough thought into why not, and there’s no consensus on who we should celebrate instead, so they just carry on with the status quo.

(Here in the UK, we’re mercifully spared such bullshit.)

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Yes, you can roam the length and breadth of this island without encountering a single pub, school, statue or street sign commemorating some floating bastard who swanned around the world “discovering” brown people into their graves

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We know Columbus was a bad navigator and captain, so it’s no surprise he’s bad at other things too. After all, he thought he had landed in India, to add to the linguistic crimes of calling the locals “Indians,” and thought that the spice he was introduced to was pepper, which is why we call chilis that.

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NOW I know why my bank is closed today. Had no idea.

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Idiots celebrate him because idiots grow in number, and helped elect an idiot to the highest office in the land.

We are functionally a country of idiots, run by idiots, for idiots. At this point its just a coincidence anyone intelligent that has studied history still exists here.

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Italian Americans advocated for it, is pretty much the long and short of it. :woman_shrugging:

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Catholicism

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Interesting that you took that whole article, a nuanced story about how a group of marginalized immigrants found a way to assert their identity as Americans amidst a backdrop of ethnic and religious bigotry, and distilled it into a single word that basically suggests “Catholics are assholes.”

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My sarcasm detector almost failed with that one.

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This further mutated into “cannibal” when Columbus wrote about his unproven fears that some of the native people might eat them. He never witnessed this happening, of course;

The original Karen.

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The effort to get his expedition funded and planned (no matter how bad his seamanship) took some planning. Columbus was almost certainly not stupid. I can’t help but think “they are not half as beautiful as they are painted” is ironic.

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More like the entire GOP presidential platform: “y’all are gonna do stuff, stuff we don’t like, socialistic COMMIE stuff, we just KNOW it!!”

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Fortunately, some are now advocating against it:

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Where does extreme narcissism end and stupidity begin? Asking for an orange friend

Every year, I’m reminded of this episode of The Sopranos, but haven’t actually watched it since it aired:

It’s brilliant writing. A bunch of overweight, lazy, privileged white men grousing about actually oppressed people advocating for recognition and rousing themselves to violence.

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